116 Ray Scott Percival
perception are insufficient to define a solution: specific assumptions
about each domain are required.^11
But there is also a central cognition, the part of the mind that takes
output from perception and solves general problems, uses inferences,
analogy and metaphor and creates new thought. This is not modular.
There are input modules for vision, audition, face recognition and lan-
guage. Each module is:a. Innately-specified,
b. Mandatory (when you open your eyes, you cannot help but see an
environment that is placed before you),
c. Swift in operation (seeing the environment is experienced as
instantaneous),
d. Encapsulated (what you see is not influenced by what you hear or
touch and vice versa. Also, what we know has little effect on our
perception; for example, visual illusions persist even when we
know they are illusions.),^12
e. Delivering shallow or non-conceptual outputs (In the case of
vision, producing a 2^1 / 2 D “sketch”.)
f. Associated with specific neural systems, (g) liable to specific
patterns of break down, (h) develop according to a specific
sequence.In our ancestral environment it paid in many circumstances to be able to
perceive and act rapidly to opportunities and dangers. In other circum-
stances, it paid to be able to think more strategically and with greater
reflection and creativity. Fodor’s conjecture is that evolution equipped us
with perception modules that are perfectly suited to rapid action, and
also with a general purpose intelligence that is more suited to the more
reflective phases of adaptation. Fodor’s view can be called peripheral-
systems modularity.
Since Fodor’s book there has been a flurry of various versions of
modularity. At the other extreme to Fodor are a number of positions that
argue for massive modularity, that even central cognition is a set of mod-
ular systems.^13 On this view, there is little learning; most of our ability
to think about the world is already hard-wired into us. In between these
two views lies a moderately modular view, that there are both peripheral
and central modular processes, but there is still room for general pur-
pose thought and creativity.^14
What all these modular views have in common is the assumption that
the mind is not designed from scratch with the goal of adaptation to an